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An anonymous reader writes "PC World has first impressions of what it's like to run Windows with Boot Camp, the recently announced official dual-boot software for the Intel Macs." From the article: "Back in Windows, I got right down to business and installed a few games to put the graphics and sound support to the test. The quick and dirty verdict on performance? Most impressive. Doom 3 and Far Cry both ran smoothly with high-end graphics options turned on. In both cases, I had to tweak visual settings manually, since the games automatically set themselves to very low settings. Far Cry, for example, autodetected very low settings, but it ran without a hitch when I bumped the resolution up to 1280 by 720, with all visual quality options set to 'High.'"

It's *very* fast, and has full support for Intel VT. Using Windows (or any other OS) inside of the environment is almost like using it natively on the hardware. Literally. It is quite amazing. (Here's a video someone made of it with SnapzPro [prodedgy.com] - that is not my site. )This is the solution many people are waiting for; not dual booting - with the exception of things that need native 3D graphics support, of course...but otherwise, Parallels absolutely screams. This won't be novel to people who have already used things like VMware Workstation on other platforms. But to someone like myself, who has been hoping for a virtualization solution since the very second Steve Jobs uttered that Apple was switching to Intel, this, when polished and in its final form, will be something of a holy grail.

Virtualization will still be a HUGE benefit to people versus the annoyance of dual-booting. There's some overlap, but both technologies have their places.

Also, for those concerned about running a Windows environment alongside Mac OS X, this is just like the old Virtual PC model (except not horribly slow;-). It's much less likely to be problematic for the following reasons:

- The entire environment is "sandboxed", network-wise, within the host OS's networking. Most Windows XP installations will now be behind the integrated software firewall anyway, but this is just another layer of protection: it's essentially like being behind a NAT router.

- A virtual machine environment, being secondary to the primary environment, is typically only used for targeted tasks, not routinely used for things like web browsing, email, and downloading - the major vectors of infection for much spyware/malware

- Since the virtual machine's disk is just a file on the host OS's drive, it can be immediately trashed and restored from a known-good pristine backup in seconds

- If no filesystem sharing is done via the VM between the Windows environment and the host (Mac OS X) environment, there is no[1] way that even severe malware within the Windows environment can cause any damage to the Mac OS X environment

- If filesystems are shared, e.g., a folder on the Mac side is shared as a drive letter on the Windows side, any malware that alters filesystems could theoretically alter the shared filesystem. If a virus, for example, attempted to delete all files on drives other than C:, that would be affected. But, 1.) Most malware doesn't just arbitrarily delete files, because its goal is to spread itself, and 2.) ONLY files that are shared could even theoretically be affected. Also, Windows malware will typically target Windows OS features and filesystem elements. But if you really are paranoid and want to be safe, you probably wouldn't want to, say, share your entire Mac OS X volume as a drive letter into the PC environment.

The bottom line is that from a technical and practical usage standpoint, running Windows in a VM is probably the safest possible way to run Windows, and there aren't really any ways, except for very specific ways via the explicit filesystem sharing, that anything that happens in t

It's because it's a trojan horse. It will get a ton of Windows kids to buy Macs to dual-boot OS X and Windows, forcing them to see Windows XP and OS X side-by-side (and we know who wins that shootout). Not to mention it sells more Macs. It's good news all around. The "lack of games" argument has just been disintegrated forever.

um, There's been an outlook client on the Mac since forever. The Exchange group has been maintaining it but hasn't been advertising it. If you have an exchange setup, the client disk has a hidden mac partition on it that only shows the mac client. A large number of exchange admins don't even know it exists.

Yes and no. For the past several years, MSFT has taken the position that the preferred Exchange client on the Mac is Entourage (part of the Mac Office suite). The problem is that Entourage doesn't "speak" MAPI and instead relies on a semi-kludge of synchronizing through Exchange webmail/WebDAV. It also will not work with Exchange servers older than 2000/SP2. At my office, I can use Entourage to sync nicely with my e-mail, but the calendaring functionality is completely broken, as are task lists etc. (this might be cured if you have a newer version of Exchange than we do). For those interested, Microsoft has a guide for Exchange admins with Entourage users [microsoft.com].

As you mentioned, there is a true Outlook client for the Mac that synchronizes natively with Exchange servers - but it was dropped in favor of Entourage years ago and hence was never Carbonized to run natively under OS X. So running the program under Classic (which isn't even an option on the Intel Macs) would be your only way of getting 100% Outlook functionality. As a result, those users on Intel Macs or those looking for true OS X solutions are very much stuck with using Windows to get the full functionality.

As you mentioned, there is a true Outlook client for the Mac that synchronizes natively with Exchange servers - but it was dropped in favor of Entourage years ago and hence was never Carbonized to run natively under OS X.

I never understood this. Microsoft released this software two months before the Mac OS X public beta shipped - and two years after Apple screamed from the rooftops that Rhapsody was the future of the Mac OS.

In other words, one of the most significant pieces of software an enterprise Mac use

Its the first time I've seen so many Macheads get so excited about running windows (or windows applications).

Yeah, dual booting any PC has not interested me in almost 10 years. Its a PITA, wastes time, etc. It might be of interest if I could put an OS to sleep and maintain its state, but starting fresh multiple times in one day is of no interest to me.

Am I the only one that found this line interesting? --

"Back in Windows, I got right down to business and installed a few games..."

Its the first time I've seen so many Macheads get so excited about running windows (or windows applications).

You obviously weren't around 10 years ago for the release of SoftWindows, Virtual PC, RealPC, or OrangeMicro's PCI x86 compatible cards. The only people who are shocked by Apple's actions and Apple users' excitement about Windows compatibility are those who haven't been paying much attention. Heck, Apple even had print ads and a TV commercial showing their systems running both OSs at the same time.

Is it really that surprising? When I was last upgrading my laptop (which is my main machine at home), I very nearly went for a Mac. The main thing that made me shy away from that was that one application (a decent design/admin GUI for PostgreSQL) that I use quite a lot was not available, nor were there any decent alternatives to it, on the Mac. Had I been able to boot into Windows to use that one tool (or even better, used it under emulation/virtualisation while still in MacOS), I would almost certainly have ended up with a Mac.

Virtualization is more significant in the long term, because it allows Windows to truly become a legacy system hosted on Mac OS, Linux, or Solaris. This way, the infrastructure can be UNIX based while people still using Outlook can avoid gutting and relearning their workflows. Another huge benefit is that the image files can be backed up easily, and malware attacks are mitigated simply by replacing the image!

One more point: on some systems, the image files grow as the virtual disk usage grows, so those backups don't need to be the size of the entire virtual file system. Even if that isn't the case, the image files compress pretty well, especially if the virtual file system was initialized to all zeros in the data blocks.

I know this may sound stupid but, one thing I have been expecting from virtualization applications it the ability of "throtling" (spell?) the internal system, something like the [`] key in ZSNES or the [TAB] in SNES9x, I know they are different things in principle but it would be nice to have a similar capability.Other capabilites I am waiting for are:- Ability to scale the image (something similar to what TightVNC does) so that I can have a 800x600 VM scaled to 2/3- High integration with the host OS (copy

I'm running it now - install is very fast, runtime very fast. Couple of notes though:

Can't access the physical CD

No sound

Other than that though, it's an excellent product. I've been running the Q front-end for Qemu, and used Virtual PC 7 on PPC. This blows them both away. But please can I have a sound card? Pretty please?

Usenet thread containing my walkthrough comments whilst I was performing the install is here [google.co.uk] (scroll down the thread a little).

No doubt this 1st beta release is a response to kill any adoption of the "hack" method with attendant community creation. I think that it's very likely that the normal course of events would have seen the beta released later with all hardware drivers already written at least in rough form.

Jeez, dude, get a life. This is second time you've made a lengthy, breathless post on this subject, and both of them covered pretty much the same ground. I appreciate some of the information you've provided, but you need to get a grip — this is a new product from a semi-major hardware company, not the return of Jesus.

But have you used Virtual PC or VMWare? It seems like exactly the same thing, except cheaper and available on Mac. That's interesting, but those are well established products with good performance vs this new one that is new and untested. So your post looks a lot like advertising because you fail to compare it to the obvious competition.

Yes, I have used Virtual PC under Windows (and Mac), VMware Workstaion on Windows and Linux.Indeed, I even said this won't be novel or interesting to people who have used VMware before.

But yes, the keys are that it's available on Mac - which is huge - cheap, and is the first desktop virtualization solution to support Intel VT. In general, it's comparable with things like VMware and VPC (Win), albeit in beta and, as such, less polished.

But that something like this is finally available for Mac OS X on an Appl

I have nothing whatsoever to do with Parallels in any way, shape, or form.
What, I talk up a product that I (and many, many others) have been waiting for for YEARS, and now all of a sudden it's marketing?

I have nothing whatsoever to do with Parallels in any way, shape, or form. What, I talk up a product that I (and many, many others) have been waiting for for YEARS, and now all of a sudden it's marketing?

You posted nearly the same paragraph in two threads on consecutive days. It smells a lot like marketing, even if that's not your stated intention:

Virtualization company Parallels [parallels.com] announced that it will be bringing its Parallels Workstation virtualization product to Intel-based Macs [techworld.com]. Parallels is a hypervisor-based (with a kernel module) virtual machine solution already shipping for Windows and Linux, and is the first desktop virtualization product to support Intel VT/Vanderpool CPU "partitioning". It's also only $50. Parallels also has a long list of officially supported guest OSes [parallels.com], and that's just the ones that are *officially* supported. So either way, we'll have a nice dual boot solution AND a nice virtualization solution!

Virtualization company Parallels [parallels.com] announced a public beta of its Parallels Workstation virtualization product to Intel-based Macs [parallels.com] (direct download [parallels.com]. Parallels is a quasi-hypervisor-based (with a kernel module) virtual machine solution already shipping for Windows and Linux, and is the first desktop virtualization product to support Intel VT/Vanderpool CPU "partitioning". Once out of beta, It will also be only $50. Parallels also has a long list of officially supported guest OSes [parallels.com], and that's just the ones that are *officially* supported. It will likely run any x86-based OS you throw at it.

I don't understand why people are so excited about booting Windows on Macs. To the degree that one is kept off Macs by the need for Windows-only software, isn't emulation (or better yet, a WINE-like translator) much more useful? If you want to run Windows to the exclusion of MacOS, why buy the Mac at all?

Maybe...But if the response I have seen is anything to go by, Apple will sell a fair few computers because of Boot Camp. Even in this discussion there are people saying: "Right, I'm getting a Mac" or "Just ordered my first Mac".

I've been seeing that all day. I'm quite surprised. I expected more whining and more dithering, but a lot of people seem to be jumping at the chance of getting their first Mac.

Every Mac User knows we have the better desktop OS, it's just that that wasn't quite enough for people with

Yeah, Boot Camp is exciting and great, but this article is total fluff. "Firefox downloaded and installed flawlessly." Just the kind of unrelenting journalism I expect from PC World.

Here's the funny thing. If I ever load Windows on my Mac, the last thing I'm going to do is use it for anything that has to do with the web, except maybe online gaming. If I want to do e-mail or browse the web, I'll switch back to OS X so I can avoid all the Windows Malware out there.

No. Because you can boot back into OS X. So it's quite different from any other x86 machine, becuase you can't do that on them (OSX86 does not count...it's far behind Apple's updates and doesn't run correctly).

Windows is just the toy OS I keep installed to play The Sims 2 and Oblivion. I do my real work in OS X.

You know, I wasn't really planning to replace my dual G5 powermac for quite some time, but this might be enough to motivate me to put it up on ebay and get an intel machine when they come out. Every once in a while I get the "hey you gotta try this awesome game" IM from a friend, and being able to fire up windows and give it a shot would sure be nice. I still have no desire to waste space with a second windows box that would only be booted once in a while, but being able to dual boot would be pretty sweet. Plus, with virtualization coming soon (beta already out) [macobserver.com], there's suddenly a whole lot more reason to upgrade to intel macs.

You know, I wasn't really planning to replace my dual G5 powermac for quite some time, but this might be enough to motivate me to put it up on ebay and get an intel machine when they come out.

Don't hold your breath. Adobe is busy digging itself out of the huge mess that is "we never got off Codewarrior", and won't go Universal-Binary until the next release. Microsoft isn't in quite as bad a position, but is desperate to get people to upgrade to verion N+1 in office, so don't count on a free UB version there.

While the "cottage industry" is mostly embracing UB and virtually everything I use has been UB for at least one or two minor revision numbers- the big boys are dragging their feet. Even Diskwarrior (from the vaporware kings, Alsoft- DiskExpress for OSX anyone?) isn't UB yet.

I'm not exactly thrilled about Bootcamp. Why? 1)I don't want to dedicate 20-30GB to a disk partition for a host OS I'm not going to use except for gaming and 1-2 Windows-only apps I need. I much prefer an emulator-based solution like Qemu, or WINE aka "darwine". I'm also not thrilled because this just largely removed the "necessity" fire from under the pants of darwine and Qemu developers, and both projects desperately need more work.

Unfortunately, Qemu/Q is buggy enough that Windows Update doesn't run on an installed guest OS and it doesn't import VPC7 systems cleanly like it claims. Darwine can't handle anything more complex than Minesweeper; half the installers I try don't run, and what does install never works. One error I saw in the WINE log said "JPEG support not builtin". Just loooovely.

Oh yeah- and if you use Mono on OSX, there's an intel-only build, but it's missing a lot of standard important libraries, and the devs have refused to release a proper build. Oh yeah- and setting up a system to actually build mono is a goddamn pain and two thirds.

As the summary states, Boot Camp is there to enable Windows / Mac OS dual booting on an Intel based Mac. It includes a non-destructive partition tool plus the device drivers Windows XP needs to run on the Mac hardware. More info and the download [apple.com] are available from Apple. Though it's not yet officially supported by Apple, a release version should be included in Mac OS X v10.5, "Leopard".

About 10 years ago I showed a friend my computer (a Mac, at the time) and told him about how, with VirtualPC, I could run Windows on Mac. He didn't know much about tech at the time, so his comment was "so what you're telling me is that you can 'dumb down' your computer so you can use Windows programs?"

Dear Mr. Dvorak:Ann Landers wouldn't print this. I have nowhere else to turn. Have to get the word out. Warn other parents. I must be rambling on. Let me try and explain. It's about my son, Billy. He's always been a good, normal ten year old boy. Well, last spring we sat down after dinner to select summer camp for Billy. We sorted through the camp brochures. There were the usual camps with swimming, canoeing, games, singing by the campfire you know. There were sports camps and specialty camps for weight reduction, music, military camps and camps that specialized in Tibetan knot tying. I tried to talk him into Camp Winnepoopoo. It's where he went last year. (He made an adorable picture out of painted pinto beans and macaroni). Billy would have none of it. Billy pulled a brochure out of his pocket. It was for a COMPUTER CAMP| We should have put our foot down right there, if only we had known. He left three weeks ago. I don't know what's happened. He's changed. I can't explain it. See for yourself. These are some of my little Billy's letters.

Dear Mom,The kids are dorky nerds. The food stinks. The computers are the only good part. We're learning how to program. Late at night is the best time to program, so they let us stay up.Love, Billy.

Dear Mom,Camp is O.K. Last night we had pizza in the middle of the night. We all get to choose what we want to drink. I drink Classic Coke. By the way, can you make Szechwan food? I'm getting used to it now. Gotta go, it's time for the flowchart class.Love, Billy.

P.S. This is written on a word processor. Pretty swell, huh? It's spell checked too.

Dear Mom,Don't worry. We do regular camp stuff. We told ghost stories by the glow of the green computer screens. It was real neat. I don't have much of a tan 'cause we don't go outside very often. You can't see the computer screen in the sunlight anyway. That wimp camp I went to last year fed us weird food too. Lay off, Mom. I'm okay, really.Love, Billy.

Dear Mom,I'm fine. I'm sleeping enough. I'm eating enough. This is the best camp ever. We scared the counselor with some phony worm code. It was real funny. He got mad and yelled. Frederick says it's okay. Can you send more money? I spent mine on a pocket protector and a box of blank diskettes. I've got to chip in on the phone bill. Did you know that you can talk to people on a computer? Give my regards to Dad.Love, Billy.

Dear Mother,Forget the money for the telephone. We've got a way to not pay. Sorry I haven't written. I've been learning a lot. I'm real good at getting onto any computer in the country. It's really easy! I got into the university's in less than fifteen minutes. Frederick did it in five, he's going to show me how. Frederick is my bunk partner. He's really smart. He says that I shouldn't call myself Billy anymore. So, I'm not.Signed, William.

Dear Mother,How nice of you to come up on Parents Day. Why'd you get so upset? I haven't gained that much weight. The glasses aren't real. Everybody wears them. I was trying to fit in. Believe me, the tape on them is cool. I thought that you'd be proud of my program. After all, I've made some money on it. A publisher is sending a check for $30,000. Anyway, I've paid for the next six weeks of camp. I won't be home until late August.Regards, William.

Mother,Stop treating me like a child. True -- physically I am only ten years old. It was silly of you to try to kidnap me. Do not try again. Remember, I can make your life miserable (i.e. - the bank, credit bureau, and government computers). I am not kidding. O.K.? I won't write again and this is your only warning. The emotions of this interpersonal communication drain me.Sincerely, William.

See what I mean? It's been two weeks since I've heard from my little boy. What can I do, Mr. Dvorak? I know that it's probably too late to save my little Billy. But, if by printing these letters you can save JUST ONE...CHILD from a life of programming, please, I beg of you to do so. Thank you very much.

To everyone who thinks this is going to be Apple's demise, you are completely wrong. No one buys a Mac for the hardware. Apple blathers on and on about how they're a hardware company, but that's bull. They're a software company, and they make the best desktop operating system on the planet.

No one is going to buy a Mac now to run Windows on it. They're going to buy a Mac because they've always wanted to try OS X, but they have a few stubborn applications that they need to run on Windows, and until now couldn't justify the risk of switching and losing access to them. People on here would say "Just keep a second computer!", but most people aren't interested in that.

It is absurd to suggest that Apple is going to die now that people can run Windows on their Mac. The whole point of a Mac is NOT to run Windows. That's why people pay Apple's high prices - for the ability to run OS X. Companies are not going to stop making OS X software just because Apples can run Windows - if people wanted Windows, they would've bought a freaking Dell!

What this does is make it possible, not convenient, for people to run any Windows applications that they still depend on. I don't understand why people think this means companies will stop porting applications to OS X - no one is going to tolerate dual-booting between OS X and Windows to use any major desktop application.

The only things that will be affected are utility programs from small companies that don't primarily make software - for instance, I have a GPS unit and Meade Telescope that can both only be updated from Windows. I'd imagine any plans for Mac ports of those utilities are going to be put on hold (I doubt they even existed). That's a little bit annoying, but you have to take the bad with good.

As for games, Mac gaming is not in an especially robust state at the moment anyway. I really don't care to see it die, I've never played a game on my Mac.

Take my dad, for instance. He loves to play chess against Fritz 8 and over the net with Playchess.com, which I bought him a few years ago. But it only runs on Windows. He's been wanting to get a Mac when his current computer dies, but until now he wouldn't be able to run his favorite software. He doesn't mind the hassle of dual-booting.

This will entice a huge population of people who have been teetering on the edge to make the switch. And now every time they reboot into OS X from Windows, or into Windows from OS X, the superiority of OS X will become clear. Even more so as time goes on, when the Windows installation becomes a spyware-infested, bloated piece of crap with fifteen different taskbar icons taking up 30MB of RAM each that starts to pause mysteriously after common tasks, and OS X just keeps humming along.

I didn't have any plans to upgrade my PowerBook before this, but I'm going to pick up a MacBook Pro this weekend.

Huh, I get $3600 for the MacBook... or did you forget to include the 3 year warranty that's standard on the Dell M90?

But even so, you're comparing a 17" laptop with 1920x1200 resolution and an insanely powerful graphics card (Nvidia Quadro FX 2500M w/ 512 MB dedicated memory) to a 15" laptop with 1440x900 resolution and a very powerful graphics card (ATI Mobility 1600 w/ 256 MB dedicated memory). Not to mention the vast raft of other differences between the two. And the Dell is more expensive? Imagine that! I bet you didn't even try to use free Dell coupons that cut the price down, now did you? Hell, I can't even guess what screwed up way you configured the Dell to make such an absurd comparison -- because, unsurprisingly, you didn't give details.

Now the Dell is not a 100% replica of the Apple, but neither is the Apple completely superior to the Dell. This isn't a full list of differences, but it hits the high points:

Dell advantages: Higher resolution screen (1680x1050), dual layer burner, built in modem, two mouse buttons on the laptop itself, $950 in your pocket. (Yesterday you could've gotten 1 GB of RAM for the same price, but that deal expired)

Mac advantages: Much more powerful video card, slightly faster RAM (the Dell can take the RAM, they're just being cheap asses), integrated web cam, backlit keyboard, can boot both OS X and XP.

Again, that's not a full list. There are software differences (which are solved for $1000 for what essentially boiled down to running OS X. I suspect most other people look at it the same way.

You can cobble stuff together from OSS/Free, but it's nowhere near the quality and ease of use of either iLife or Adobe, so I simply don't recommend trying. Particularly for the video editing/DVD authoring bit (although, on that front, Nero is decent and can be had for $40).

I dunno why I haven't seen anyone comment on this but, I think many of us Mac using web developers should be loving this. Not so much the dual boot, but the virtualization end of this. The ONE app that I've been lacking on a Mac (and when I was running Linux) is IE 6 and soon enough IE 7 (whenever they decide to release it).When I was running Linux, CrossOver Office actually did a pretty good job of running IE 6 so long as there was no JavaScript involved. Now I can have IE 6 (as well as the Windows version

The parent is right, for the most part. But I will share my experience. I switched a few years ago (before Panther). I bought my mac with a copy of Virtual PC and a copy of Win2k. That was going to be my "safety net" in the exact same way that a dual-boot configuration with boot camp might be considered a safety net today.It was only after I had been up and running for 6 months that I realized that I had really only used Virtual PC seriously for about two weeks before I found all of the native MacOS X apps

To everyone who thinks this is going to be Apple's demise, you are completely wrong. No one buys a Mac for the hardware.

I agree with most of your post, but this is flat-out wrong. I bought my G4 aluminum Powerbook for the hardware, period. Sure I like OS X, but I spend 90% of my time in the terminal, and the OS isn't as big a deal. This is true for many Perl developers I know. Sure, OS X is nice, but having Perl running natively on the best hardware available -- that's why we buy these things.

Is Gillette a razor company or a razor blade company. Their customers think they are a razor company and buy their razors. The stockholders know that they are a razor blade company, with razors being sold at a loss to gain volume on their core product, razor cartridges.

Anyway. I have tried OS X and I just dont like it. I feel it's to dumbed down to appeal to newbies and other non-technical people.

I go to MIT. I would say that fully half, maybe more, of the computers used by professors and students here are Macs.

And obviously, these are not hippie artists or non-technical people. They are scientists, engineers, Nobel-prize winning physicists. Hell, a few weeks ago, we had Gilad Bracha (the guy at Sun responsible for maintaining Java) give a guest lecture. He presented the slides with a PowerBook.

That should tell you something. These are some of the smartest people in the world - they're not buying the Macs for the pretty colors. My friends tell me the situation is the same at other technical colleges.

Did you ever open up the command line? If you expanded it to fill the screen, you could pretend you were running Linux. Hell, you can even run KDE under Mac OS X if you wanted to. Unless you're tinkering with the OS, there are very few things you can do in Linux that you can't do in OS X.

But the beauty of OS X is, you don't have to deal with all the hassles of Linux. With OS X, every feature of the OS just works, leaving you with more time to get actual work done, instead of fighting to configure some new software you installed, or resolve a dependency problem.

Also, Linux on laptops sucks. Power management support, fan control, wireless network support, sleep support, bluetooth, manufacturer-specific keys, none of those work. It may be possible, but it isn't pleasant.

That said, I agree with the grandparent. I've used OSX on an occasional basis, but when I need to get real work done, I use linux.I need an environment that can be configured the way I want. Choosing menu fonts and a background is what passes for "configurability" on OSX. When they start supporting multiple virtual desktops, focus follows mouse, and no toolbar (I want control of *all* pixels), wake me up and I'll take another look.

So your idea of 'real work' is configuring the UI of your desktop? (By the

One sad thing about this, as a Mac user and Mac gamer, is that this probably puts a big fat nail in the coffin for AAA OS X-native game titles. Or maybe it's less of a nail, and more like sticky tape, meaning the coffin can be reopened if OS X attains a bigger critical mass.

Another interesting side-effect is the stats. Apple is always fond of calling people 'switchers', as if when the person buys a Mac for his home, his Windows box suddenly disappears. Well, now, we've got a machine that can run anything....so...er...what is it? Makes me feel like the only real way to track platform penetration will be browser stats.

Strange new developments, indeed, even though we all knew it would happen when Apple went Intel.

That's a good idea. Maybe there could be a free linux distro that included all the necessary stuff to run a game, and developers could use that to make their games. No more worrying about Norton taking up all the resources, or MSN messenger popping up all the time in the middle of the game, or having to test the game under 1800 different windows configurations. I doubt this would be possible with a windows base, because I don't think MS would let game company give away parts of the OS free with the game

after years of grumbling about windows, drooling over macs, and making all sort of excuses, i finally opened my wallet and bought a mac. (i have literally been thinking about doing this since the tangerine iMac)

it's the 20" intel iMac. bought it last night and should be here any day.

for the record, it was the support for dual booting OS X and XP that did it for me: (a) i need a windows machine for software development purposes; (b) i had uncertainly about the availability of mac alternatives to some of my most used windows utilities (ex. dvdshrink, nero... call of duty;)

looks like i'm officially a mac guy now -- going to have to put that white apple sticker on my rear bumper -- Yikes!

Speaking from the scientific research community perspective, i gotta say this is amazing. In the lab that I work in we have both macs and windows machines -- and a linux box. We really have more computers than we need, simply because we need programs that are availible soley on mac or windows for linux. Well, that is all about to change. Seriously, if a researcher can buy a single machine that will run linux, mac and windows programs, he will be all over it. Desktop space is somewhat a premium and having all you programs and data on a single machine is excellent.

I personally see no reason why macs will not completely dominate the research world now. I know I cannot wait for my own. SWEET!

if desk space is at that much of a premium why do you have a seperate linux box (linux and windows have been able to dual boot for years)?the fact is multibooting is a kludge, maybe acceptable for laptop users where weight is a huge issue or for very occasional use of other operating systems but i don't see the attraction if your at your desk and can put the machines on the floor (and control them with a kvm switch).

This could be interesting for things like public clusters at a university though. People can

A fair set of questions...some of our windows boxes do dual boot, the linux box that does not functions as a server.I suppose that a KVM switch is an acceptable option, and we do have two for some of our workstations. However, we have 16 seperate LAB computers in our lab and 5 personal computers. I just feel that the flexibility in our lab would be greater if the majority of these computers could run both mac and windows. It seems better to have 16 macs that 32 computers all hooked up to KVM switches. I

I'm a CS student, and we've got quite a mix in our lab here. We do graphics/vision/image processing stuff, and different people like different environments. However, given the fact that our machines can be triple-boot, I doubt we'll ever buy another Dell, simply because the lab can afford apple hardware, and it makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside to have beautiful machines..:).

It's kinda cool that Apple can essentially release ONE drivers disk and be done with it. A lot has been said over the years about Apple's benefits of having known hardware...

This is how it works out with Windows. Here, have one installer. It will work on all our machines, and support everything in it. One Installshield script. It was the fastest WinXP or ANY Windows installs I've ever done.

It's kinda cool that Apple can essentially release ONE drivers disk and be done with it.

Erm, I hate to say this but install Solaris on a piece of Sun hardware and you need NO drivers disk...

Why do you believe this is anything special? It just so happens that an Apple box contains a limited range of hardware which makes it relatively easy to create a single installation CD. Just about every big IT department that uses a limited range of Dell or IBM or HP laptops creates a Windows XP installation CD with

I would just like to know if it's possible for Bootcamp to boot Windows (or any other OS for that matter, i.e. linux) from an external (USB or firewire) hard drive. That way you could make a clean delineation between your Mac system and everything else. And you wouldn't have to lug around the extra hard drive if you don't need it.

Why would I want to run the worst possible OS on the most expensive hardware? What a perversity! I want to put together my PC myself out of stock parts, then boot MacOS X...with Windows emulation until the software developers catch on and drop Windows. It would feel so good to pay for MacOS rather than the world's biggest software turd. Heck I'd pay twice as much for a good OS...I just don't want to be locked into Apple's hardware.

Since Mac virtualization looks pretty strong [slashdot.org], Windows Vista will include virtualization, and virtualization is becoming standard fare on Linux, Boot Camp might just be the "entry level" method for running both Mac and Windows apps "on the same computer". Simultaneous execution in multiple windows under virtualization is a much bigger step, but dual-booting is much easier for the normals to understand. And it gets us down the road to a bigger technical step, but a nearly seamless migration (and great relief) for the normals: Mac/Windows apps running in the same desktop, with IPC/clipboard integration across "OS" boundaries as tight as across mere app boundaries.

How long before the OS is just another app, along with any other OS'es required to run other apps? Just a library collection, running on a "nanokernel": the virtualization SW? And which OS will best run the virtualization: Windows, Linux, or some RTOS?

Best thing Apple did since... well, I think since the MacBook Pro because they've done a lot of great things this year already.

Early in my days, I tried to get people switch to Linux by explaining all its advantages, helping them to install it, the whole nine yards. Worked sometimes, didn't work most of the time.

Since then, I've gone another path: The slow migration. Show them Firefox. Give them OpenOffice. Get them to use Thunderbird. etc. Then, when they are angry about their next windos crash, suggest Linux and show them that all of those run on Linux just the same. Instant switch. Moved my girl to Ubuntu just a few weeks ago, and she only boots dual-boots into windos for games by now.

Apple's using the same technique. Let people use what they're comfortable with, but tease them with the better thing (OSX) while making the switch as painless as possible (runs in same hardware).

By the time Vista comes out, Apple will probably have a sizeable chunk of the market, definitely more than 10%.

I think a lot of people are missing the true significance of bootcamp. What bootcamp does is, for the home user, reduce the risk of buying a Mac. A lot of home users (even fairly savvy ones) are uncomfortable with the idea of jumping to a Mac if it's a one-way trip, and if they don't like it they're stuck with this very expensive piece of hardware that is useless to them because they need to run "X".

Now, they can buy a Mac in the knowledge that, if there is some vital piece of software (be it a custom app, or a game, or whatever) it/can/ be run. And, if they just hate Mac OS, they still have a very slick Windows box. This is even more the case with the availability of virtualization solutions--Apple now has a convenient transitional platform for switchers.

What Apple is betting on is that the user experience on Mac OS X is enough better that, when users get to try OSX and Windows side-by-side, they'll prefer OSX. Where OS2 missed was not by offering compatibility, but by failing to offer any compelling advantage to running native. Apple offers many compelling advantages, including a spiffy look and feel, much better "ease of use", and much less risk from malware. And that is why this strategy makes sense.

1. Since most "home users" have got Windows XP on their PCs as an OEM license, possibly with a Dell/HP/etc recovery disk for their PC, there is no way they can migrate run XP on an Apple unless they go buy a proper copy of XP on a CD at their local computer store. So, in their "unsureness" about commiting fully to Apple, not only do they have to pay for completely new hardware but also another copy of XP (in most cases). I don't see

I went through the XP installation process on my MacBook Pro last night. It worked perfectly. The only disappointments so far:

- Nothing available to configure the TouchPad (no tap-click)- No way to right click with the touchpad/button (need an external mouse)- No support for lighted keyboard (I can live with this...but it makes OSX look WOW)- No support for auto adjusting the display for lighting conditions- this I really need- The MacBook Pro melted right through my legs off when running a high workload 3D demo

So far it looks great. I downloaded some demos from ATI's developer web site to test out graphics and it looks great.

From Apple's Boot Camp page:Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

While the statements are factually correct, I found that the use of the terms "plague" and "1980s" on this page to be too pretentious for my sake.

I mostly use Windows platforms, and am looking forward to buying the first Mac system I've owned in over 11 years.

Type A: Woo who! Apple is going to the moon, and taking over the PC market. Brilliant... (stock market in this camp as well).

Type B: Apple just doomed themselves, OSX will die now...

Hmmm. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between? Which do I think it is closer?

First off, The vast majority will never dual boot. So this will not create a mass movement one way or the other. (A much bigger impact will be the virtualization program announced.

The only real impact will be those potential switchers who didn't want to abandon windows. A safety net. And the bet is that once they switch they will be doing more and more mac and less and less windows. So a small net win. I put myself in this camp.

Negative possabilities: Game devs will drop mac since they can dual boot. Well most people won't dual boot, I think they will simply watch sales of mac games. If Macs pick up market share, someone will want to exploit that with native games.

So I think this is a net positive, just not on the scale most think. This is of interest to me, but I am a small part of the market. Now where is is my Conroe Mac?

I've started benchmarking this morning on a Mac Mini. Now, granted, I don't expect it to blow me away in performance, but in 3DMark05 it scored around 600 and didn't complete all the tests. My Dell laptop (nVidia Go 6800) scores around 3000 and my desktop (nVidia 7800 GTX) around 8000. Nearly all of that is due to POS integrated graphics, but I was at least hoping it'd get around half the laptop's score.

In PCMark05 it compared more favorably. This is a comparison between my rig, a Mac Mini and a blade server we have at work. The blade server didn't totally complete the test because of its graphics card. In some cases the Mac beat my rig (stuff like media encoding/decoding), which is surprising.

And I understand I'm comparing Apples and oranges (literally). I've heard Macbook Pro users are floored by the performance in Windows of popular games, and I'm looking to get my hands on one.

I will say, without a doubt, Apple has the easiest to use dualboot installer I've ever seen. Getting Grub et all to work without frying partitions in Linux has always been a pain. With Apple's, couple clicks and I'm done.

I tried it yesterday and it worked great on my 20 in iMac. Tried a few games that ran beautifully.

However the drivers didn't seem to let me set the native resolution of the display... the 20in display is at 1680x1050 but the highest res allowed in the windrivers was 14xx X 10xx or something I forget. And none of the available resolutions even matched up with the ratio of this screen so no matter what the desktop was stretched one way or another. Anyone figure this out?

Mac dealers (not apple store, but indies) will soon start offering Dual boot systems for sale, I'll bet. This is great you say, windows users can now get the elegance of Mac hardware. Billy G is probably saying that very thing right now. He's probably thinking that this situation opens up a whole new install base, just as Bill H states below. So a Mac user goes into an indie dealer and says," You mean that I can buy this Mac Mini with Windows for only $599.99? (that's $499.99 for the Mini and $99.00 for the XP home OEM)? I'll take it." Great, there's another Windows bootable sold.

However, look at it from Jobs' view. Sure, I'll bet lots of Windows users will start using Mac systems. Problem is, they're going to see that tiger icon EVERYTIME THEY BOOT THE SYSTEM. Sooner or later, they'll get curious.

They're going to click on it.

Some will use it.

Some won't look back.

Let's say that the user above was a Windows user that just wanted the sexy SFF box. They try using Tiger and decide that they like it better. The next Mac Mini they buy will only cost them $499.99 ($499.99 for the mini and $0.00 for the Windows XP they decided they didn't need.) Uh-oh, there's a lost bootable sale. Uh-oh, there's lots of lost bootable sales since the useful life of any computer is only a few years.

We all know that for whatever reason, current Mac users are fanatics. We also know that every single current Mac user has a job, or a friend or a family member with a Windows PC. They've seen Windows. They won't be the ones switching over. I haven't seen Tiger yet. I expect that neither have people like my dad and most of my co-workers. I've heard that Tiger is easier to use. What happens when people that previously had no choice, suddenly do?

Has anyone tried installing or even booting up off of a Linux install CD/DVD after installing Boot Camp?

I heard a few people complaining here on Slashdot that Apple is ignoring the Linux community with this Boot Camp beta, although a lot of people pointed out that a few distros already had EFI boot capability.

I got a Mac Mini last night, installed Boot Camp, installed and reinstalled WinXP several times trying to figure out what partitions would work for my purposes. That took until well past midnight, so I'm finishing up setup for OS X and WinXP this morning at work, since this is for work (where the only Windows app I ever, ever have to use is Lotus Domino Admin and Designer since they dropped Mac support after R5).

We use SuSE Linux 10 Pro on some entry-level desktops and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on all our servers. I popped in the SuSE 10 DVD, tried to pick it for booting in the Startup Disk control panel, and it worked! I tried picking it during boot-up, and it also worked. I got it to the point where I could resize the Windows partition to install Linux, and everything else gave no errors.

We have some other odd linux live-boot CD's and even Solaris x86 that we're going to try just for the heck of it. I'm not going to go as far as to install any of them until I've tested the OS X and Win XP dual-booting for about a week, since that would be most useful for our users.

I'm the I.T. Director in a business with about 300 employees world-wide, and the fact that we could boot Mac OS X, Win XP, and Linux on Apple hardware essentially removes all obstacles to purchasing these computers. I've been a Mac fan for 15 years since I started working here, and in the last 5 years it's been virtually impossible for me to convince the President or CEO that in certain cases it makes sense to buy a Mac. The reason has always been that "they don't run Windows".

For guys like me and companies like us, Apple is going to start to see business they haven't seen in years because of what they did yesterday...

Sure this may help their hardware sales, and it does offer this argument for the Apple community, "Why not buy an Apple, you can run Windows too?"

However, what this says to developers is what it said to them during OS/2 days, and why no 'native' good OS/2 ports of popular software existed. There was no need, it ran Windows just fine, so developers would just write a Windows version and expect OS/2 to run their application inside the Windows binaries.

The same could potentially happen for OSX and Apple. Especially in the games market. Why spend good money on an OSX port of your game if you assume most Mac users could just boot WindowsXP or Vista and run your game? Especially when Windows still has a video/performance margin over OSX technology for gaming.

The are two marginal ways this could benefit Apple.1) Apple becames a major hardware vendor, and competes with Dell and Gateway, etc.2) Users do start buying Macs to dual boot, and find they like OSX much better than Windows. (Unfortunately, as hard is this is to stomach for a lot of Slashdotters, this doesn't happen in the world as much as OSX proponents would like to believe.) Usually when users are forced or try to move fully to OSX they do it kicking and screaming and if they were comfortable in Windows, end up back there. (And yes, I have seen this in several companies, management gets on the buzz, flips over a department of 20 or 30 users to OSX, and the users end up forcing the return of Windows PCs - especailly in department that were once Mac dominated like graphic design but later moved all their users to Windows in the 90s. The Users have not always been so keen to move back to Mac when it is forced on them.)

So even if this does help Apple and Mac with marketshare, it will also become a contest of preferred usability between Vista and OSX, and I don't see OSX 'always' winning.

My personal opinion is that this will boost OSX and Mac sales initially, but in the long run will destroy OSX, and Apple will potentially just become another Dell or Gateway.

Which I do not think is such a good thing. Competition is a good thing.

Besides, like I said above this type of move certainly didn't work for OS/2, and not only from the developer perspective, users liked OS/2, but not 'enough' to purchase it and Windows to run Windows applications.

So will OSX be strong enough to keep users in OSX for the majority of use or just be a side booted OS, and people end up flipping to Windows for games and applications OSX doesn't yet have?

If people keep finding themselves flipping back to Windows, they will start spending more time in Windows, just to not have to reboot. And when this slide happens, OSX will not be the dominate OS even running on Apple Macs.

(Sure Windows runs on Macs already in VirtualPC, but there is big difference between running an emulator to 'get by' for some business applications, and booting into the full experience of Windows and running Windows games at high speed. And I think Apple is a little to arrogant on how good OSX is to think they will keep the market even on their own hardware.)

Hi, Mac user here. All these posts about "Why should a company develop for Mac when they know people can just dual boot? This will kill Mac games..."

C'mon. Mac gaming is ALREADY dead, by any measure. Look at the number of high-end demos posted on MacGameFiles.com over the past year, and you'll see that it's falled off to nearly zero in recent months. GameSpy stopped supporting Mac ladders a while ago. Go to a computer store, and if you can even find one that sells Mac games, you'll see that for all the shelves and shelves of PC games, there's only about 20% as many titles available for the Mac. Call of Duty 2? No. Battlefield 2? No? Half-Life,...the list goes on. And if a game DOES come out, it can be as much as a year since the PC version came out. And of the games that DO exist, the older ones (e.g. Medal of Honor) are *still* full price, whereas the same PC titles are half as much as they used to be or more. So, only one of 5 high-end titles (at best) and no bargain-bin games, makes the term "Mac gaming" kind of an oxymoron.

OS X is nice, but I really love the Mac hardware. I'm interested in buying a MacBook Pro and putting *only* Windows on it. To get work done (cygwin, virtualization) and to play GAMES.

Has this idiot never played FarCry before? Of course it starts out at a default, low resolution. And of course you can set it higher, if you want.

Whilst this has nothing to do with the whole windows/os x debate, I didn't want to let this slide.

I gave up on PC games because of this. I want to sit down and play a game. Not sit down and spend hours fiddling with graphic settings. I hated it when I thought I had got Morrowind running fine, then I would hit a "busy" place, or scene or battle, and it would

Second, most modern games, can (and should) automatically detect graphics settings according to the computer hardware. You are free to change the settings afterwards. The importance of this is easily seen with most modern shooters (or Oblivion), which have obscene amounts of graphics settings. I'm sure Oblivion has around 20 different levers with at least ten options each. Giving a massive 10^20 number of combinations. Some help from the game designers in finding an optimal setting automatically is much appreciated.

If I wasn't so diplomatic, I'd be tempted to call anyone wanting to waste time testing all combinations a moron.

Given the desire for Linux to run on everything, it's not surprising that someone's already tried running Linux with Boot Camp [theweeklyrant.com], which apparently does seem to work. Granted, there's still the issue of Linux drivers for the hardware, but it is a start.

Well, I think the general opinion is that this is for switchers. I mean, I can't buy a MacBook at work, because I need winodows. Or rather, I used ot not be able to buy one. Now I can.Lately I've been deciding on a new machine, and I'd pretty much came to the conclusion that I would get hold of a Mac Mini rather than putting a new video card in my PC so I could play Half-life 2. BootCamp means I can get both in one go. It also means I can install the windows-only tools I need for work so I don't have to unp

Apple might very well testing the waters to see what the result of this Boot Camp experiment is. If it turns out that Windows users are turning to Apple's OS in droves, then Apple might be tempted to sell OSX to a number of selected partners, probably in select markets (using Lenovo as a sales partner in China and someone else in India for example, both markets where Apple's prices are usually too high for general adoption)

In addition to your point, an increase in hardware demand (XP on a Mac) more directly leads to an increase in hardware sales than when you compare software (OS X on PCs) in the same situation. It's because of piracy. That's not to say people don't buy software, but that you can't pirate hardware.

No, your parent is correct. The EULA for all recent OEM versions of Windows ties the license to the computer. You cannot transfer it. Here's the relevant text from my copy of the Windows XP Professional EULA:

THIS LICENSE MAY NOT BE SHARED, TRANSFERRED TO OR USED CONCURRENTLY ON DIFFERENT COMPUTERS. The SOFTWARE is licensed with the HARDWARE as a single integrated product and may only be used with the HARDWARE. If the SOFTWARE is not accompanied by new HARDWARE, you may not use the SOFTWARE. You may pe